If you think your computers ‘get up and go’ got up and left, it probably did a long, long time ago.
I got a call from a customer who thought that way. She said it took 30 minutes for her machine to fully boot, and sent me the emoji dinosaur texts referring to her workstation.
I sent her a note back, “By the time I get done with it, your old laptop will be a Screaming Meanie, and you will want to send back the computer your new job just sent you.” She gave me the thumbs up.
So, let’s take a look at what my customer has, and what the upgrade to a Screaming Meanie looks like.
My customer has the ESET managed antivirus service, which sells for $42.50 flat fee per year per computer, and the antivirus agent gives me these basic system specs.
- Intel Core i7-4800MQ @ 2.7 Quad Core – 4 physical cores + 4 more virtual hyper-threaded cores
- Two RAM slots at 4 Gigs per slot
- Toshiba 500 Gig platter drive 5400 RPM – Really slow
- System bought 08/2014
When systems are purchased from big box stores, the manufacturers pander to a price point where they think the system will sell. When they do this, they install parts that are not built for optimal performance.
So, what are the parts to upgrade to give you the biggest bang for the buck?
- RAM
- Hard Drive
RAM:
This mother board will let you put up to 32 Gigs of RAM on it. The most efficient RAM configuration, for most people, with Windows 10 is 16 Gigs, and the price is currently $62.00.
The more RAM the system has, the better because it limits how much paging the computer does.
Paging is the act of queuing content between the RAM and the hard drive. The CPU will anticipate what you want to look at and send that information to the RAM, from the hard drive for faster access, and send the information it replaced in RAM to the paging file located on the drive. The process happens thousands of times a day so the more RAM you have in the system the less paging takes place to slow down the computer.
However, there is also too much of a good thing. I did say the motherboard could take up to 32 Gigs of RAM, but at that point it is only incrementally beneficial depending on what you are using the computer for.
That amount of RAM is helpful when you are doing graphic design, or using land surveying programs because they fill the memory with their program for the same reason to provide more and faster access to the program code and the data created. If you are doing light word processing, email, or presentations, the max amount of RAM is nice but a waste of money and resources.
Hard Drive:
The hard drive this computer came with is a 5400 RPM drive and is capable of transferring information at 100 Mbps, but an SSD, solid state drive, has the capability of 550 Mbps that’s a little more than 5 times faster. The price on a 500-Gig SSD is roughly $70.00.
So, for $132.00 in parts this machine will perform much better, like on order of magnitude better, Screaming Meanie better.
There is a but coming, you also have to take the age of the computer into account. Not long ago I wrote a blog post about the Anatomy of a Computer Failure and it talks about the life expectancy of computers.
This computer is about 6 years old, and if my customer uses it to failure, he might be able to get about 3 maybe 4 more years of good use out of it.
Due to the pandemic there is a shortage of computers, monitors, and printers. If you do find inventory on these items, the price is going to be higher than what it should be due to price gouging and supply / demand issues.
So, why not upgrade what you have and turn it into a Screaming Meanie?
If you would like Arnold Consulting to help upgrade your system to the Screaming Meanie call us at 847- 464-5855 or email us at Rick@arnoldconsult.com. We would like to help make you more productive with the equipment you have. Most systems are not ready for the recycle pile yet.
Sincerely,
Rick Arnold – Arnold Consulting
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